


raw.

by heartshapedcookie



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: I found this and it really resonated with how i was feeling so, partially deaf jeremy, there's the r-word. it isn't written out but it's like. implied to be said, very mild descriptions of injuries and a little language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 12:11:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15863355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartshapedcookie/pseuds/heartshapedcookie
Summary: Jeremy is new to this—to being this different.a partially deaf jeremy scrap





	raw.

**Author's Note:**

> I found this in my drafts and finished it without really looking it over so forgive me if there's mistakes, i just was really feeling how this story feels and wanted to bring it to completion

The first time, he’s fourteen.

 

He’s new to this skin and wears it awkwardly and naively, his pain still simmering below the crystallizing trauma of puberty in a sort of primordial neural soup unable to take true form due to atmospheric incompatibilities. Constellations of bruises badge his knees and his palms are chapped from catching himself and there is plastic in his ears—”sophisticated plastic,” his doctor said when he realized these tiny mechanisms felt no different than the casing on his DS, “plastic you don’t want to mess around with”—but he feels the same inside this skin. 

 

“You look the same to me,” Michael says as they ride the mirrored elevator down to the basement food court. Their reflections waver verdantly in the green, fingerprint-clouded seeing glass. “Maybe taller.”

 

“Taller,” Jeremy repeats, staring critically at his reflection. There’s a pink smudge of fresh skin on his forehead from where his stitches have recently come out and a scabrous crop of acne blazing across either cheek, but otherwise he can find no trace of radical change. If anything, Michael’s gotten taller.

 

“Spiritually taller,” Michael clarifies. The doors wheeze open. “I hope my mom gave me enough money for drinks.”

 

They’re waiting in line at the Vietnamese outlet, playfully arguing about the veracity of the latest Action Park rumors, when Jeremy first senses eyes on him—a faint, hot pressure. He oppresses himself not to turn around, knowing all too well what’s being stared at and not wanting to confront it, not right now. Michael’s gaze travels casually to the left, then locks in on something that furrows his brow slightly; he places a hand on Jeremy’s shoulder and gently edges them forward in line.

 

Michael is still talking to him, the ebb and flow of his voice unmistakable and soothingly constant, but he can feel himself sliding out of the conversation; Michael’s words buzz and hum unintelligibly. The food court is a wall of white noise, a low roar of inscrutable conversations wefted into something so apocalyptically big and so totally incomprehensible. He feels a dull pulse of panic in his chest. Coming to the mall was Michael’s idea and he knows—he  _ knows— _ that getting out of the house is good and healthy and he’ll be starting high school in less than three weeks now, he needs to dig himself out of his bed, his room, his house, but the world seems so much more daunting now, so hysterically loud and confusing.

 

They move forward in line again and Jeremy feels his right leg destabilize. He manages to catch himself on Michael’s arm before he can fall, feeling the badly healing tendons in his calf quiver like hot rubber. Michael is steadying him and trying to help him laugh it off—it’s not funny, not by a long shot, but it’s easier to rationalize when it’s just the two of them making a joke of it—when Jeremy hears the word from behind him, a grumble just loud enough to penetrate the haze of muddled voices and stab through him like an earthbound icicle. He freezes, fingers still hooked into Michael’s arm.

Michael whips his head around, surprise quickly sublimating into seething anger. There’s the urge to defend, to  _ scream,  _ blazing in his eyes, but it is directionless and confused and almost volcanic in its emotional intensity. He’s a fourteen-year-old boy with glasses and red rubber bands in his braces standing in a dingy food court, wanting to say something perfectly pointed and hurtful that will demolish the glaring stranger behind them and consistently failing. He is an incensed rattlesnake, trying to strike with no venom. 

 

“Michael,” Jeremy finally says, “it’s fine.”

 

“No, it’s not—”

 

_ “Michael.”  _ Even he can hear the brittle desperation in his voice, the crushed thinness so easy to break. Michael belatedly realizes that there is nothing he can say, nothing that won’t be childish and ineffective and reflexively mean, and takes Jeremy by the wrist. 

 

They walk around the food court circuit, neither speaking, until they come to the dinky fountain positioned in the center of the room. Jeremy watches water bubble out of its center, feeling nothing. There was the brief threat of tears earlier, back when the word first made impact, but now the  _ anger confusion distress _ have ossified within him. He can, however, feel the tightness of his new skin, straining against the once fluid pain that is starting to calcify. The whole of him feels like the patch of fresh skin on his forehead, all raw and uncertain and half-formed.

 

“Fuck him.” It’s the only thing Michael can think to say. The word is still taboo enough for Jeremy to flinch lightly. “What an asshole.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Michael glances at Jeremy, trying to gauge his current emotional state. His pale blue eyes betray nothing. “Are you okay, dude?”

 

“Yeah.” Neither of them knows if he means it or not.

 

“It’s—That word sucks. It sucks and you’re fine, there’s nothing… wrong with you. You’re still you.” When Jeremy doesn’t respond, Michael reaches out uncertainly to touch his shoulder; Jeremy leans into his hand. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

 

The wound is already citracized. He has taken that feeling and put it on a high shelf in his mind, out of his inner sight. It dawns on him that this is just the beginning, that he’s only four weeks into what is essentially a new life: this won’t be the last time. There will never be a last time.

 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Jeremy says, brushing his hair over his ears. “Let’s go.”


End file.
